East Baltimore shooting wounds 4, kills 1

A woman was killed and three other women and a man injured in an early-morning shooting that left bullet holes and blood spots across an East Baltimore street, police said.

Police responded to a reported shooting in the 700 block of N. Kenwood Ave. in the city's Madison-Eastend neighborhood about 1:27 a.m. Saturday and found the five victims, each suffering from at least one gunshot wound, police said.

Donyae Jones, 18, who was shot in the chest, was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead at 2:12 a.m., police said. She lived on the block where she was shot. The four other victims were taken to area hospitals with injuries that were not life-threatening, police said.

Another man was non-fatally injured after police were called to a shooting in the 200 Block of Mason Court around 4:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon.

The shootings marked a violent start to the summer, which also saw a man shot in West Baltimore on Friday and a man killed in Northwest Baltimore on Saturday morning.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said that a lot of people were outside on Kenwood Avenue on Friday night and that detectives are interviewing a number of people who saw the shooting. Police are trying to work out a motive, he added, and think it might have been a dispute that had escalated.

Members of the homicide unit were also surveying the scene Saturday morning and speaking to the few people sitting out on their steps.

One woman, who declined to give her name, said she was inside when the shooting started. She described two bursts of gunfire with a pause between.

Neighbors, who were just starting to come out into the street around 9:30 a.m. Saturday, were greeted by signs of the early-morning violence.

Trails of blood were visible on both sides of the street. Red splatters marked the front steps up to one house. Further down the street, a trail of drips wound its way off the sidewalk and across the road, ending at a dropped soda cup and box of take-out food.

As the morning wore on, homicide detectives left and were replaced by uniformed officers, who took up posts on the west side of the street. Guglielmi said Commissioner Anthony W. Batts has ordered additional uniformed and plainclothes officers to be deployed to the neighborhood.

Last Memorial Day, four people were shot in a single incident, including a 10-year-old boy, but shootings with so many victims are unusual. Guglielmi called Saturday's outburst and those like it "anomalies."

Citywide shootings and homicides remain at about the same level as last year, with 100 people killed as of June 15 and 163 shot, according to police statistics. But in the Eastern District, shootings and killings are both down significantly, according to department data.

Police on Saturday also reported a Friday afternoon shooting in the 1600 block of Smallwood St., in the Easterwood Neighborhood in West Baltimore.

Officers were dispatched to Johns Hopkins Hospital about 6:51 p.m. after a man had walked in with a gunshot wound. The man, who had been shot in the hand, told police he had been sitting in his car on Smallwood Street when two men approached and started firing.

A man died in the Arlington neighborhood after suffering multiple gunshot wounds, police said. Officers went to the 5200 block of Cuthbert Ave. at 11:30 a.m. Saturday and found the victim, who was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.